Dungeon Prowler : One Man Army

Chapter 1: Enrollment day

"..... In Tartarus, you will find fame and riches, only if you live long enough, and that is why you are here today". The booming voice of old instructor Mark; a former adventurer, who is currently teaching a classroom full of 10 year old kids about the dungeon named Tartarus, where all who seek adventure can find it and more, today is the enrollment day in the adventurer academy - subsidiary of the adventurer guild - in every city, in the continent of burkan.

These aspiring youngsters will; in the next 5 years, be filtered and classified according to performance and become the next batch of adventurer to explore Tartarus and bring its riches to the surface world, as well as clean up the monsters that keep spawning inside it from becoming too many, invading the surface world as a result.

"When you first enter the dungeon, you will be granted the "mark of the adventurer" by the dungeon itself, this mark is named status by the first adventurer - Adun the Twilight star, it shows you your current attribute, skills and level, the status can be locked or shared depending on your will, but there is a drawback to the mark, once you are an adventurer you can only progress inside Tartarus."

The kids were listening intently, after all, their lives depended on it, well all except one, Yunan, he looked very bored and yawned a few times while instructor Mark was giving his speech, he already read most of this information and was waiting for more interesting things that only adventurers knew, he was disappointed so far.

Trying to ignore the bored kid, instructor Mark continued explaining in a long-winded speech, that, those marked by the dungeon can no longer gain skills or strength outside the dungeon, any learning is almost futile and all training is fruitless, those adventurers must venture inside and face the dangers hidden in Tartarus to grow stronger.

On the other hand, only inside the dungeon can one grow and learn faster than those outside by leaps and bounds, if one was lucky to get a book as a drop item they could immediately learn the skill or magic it contains, also magic can only be learned by the marked ones, and it can be used outside after being learned. Although skills can be passed on, magic, on the other hand, needs a book or a grimoire to learn.

Adventurers and the guild have a mutual benefit relationship, the adventurers bring drop items and monster's cores back, the guild will buy it from them. The guild can also provide lodging and food, as well as training camps and team matching for a fee, those fees go to the running of the guild and its subsidiaries, to groom even more adventurers and gain more profit.

And since instructor Mark was a mere guild employee he would not know the secrets of Tartarus that ordinary adventurers knew, a flower in a glass house basically, trained in a standardized way and barely any adventuring in the treacherous depths of Tartarus.

Thus the bored Yunan kept yawning for the 4-hour long lecture instructor Mark gave, and when midday came it was time to decide the future of the kids, something instructor Mark looked forward to every year. He signalled towards the door and 5 other instructors came inside and with them, servants brought a crystal ball sitting on a half meter long pillar.

"These gentlemen are specialist instructors, once you touch the ball a screen will project your status, just like the mark of Tartarus, and according to your dominant attributes your class will be selected, now lineup so you can start your training". and so, the kids rushed to line up all discussing which class they want to be in and how they will have a better status than the other kids.

When the first kid touched the screen instructor Mark went on to explain "as you can see the screen shows your four attributes: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity and Wisdom, since you are only ten, your stats will be between 1 and 5, adults of 15 years old will have stats between 1 and 10. 10 is the maximum ordinary humans can achieve, while adventurers have unlimited potential". He then looked at the kid' status.

Instructor mark loudly read the status of the kid "strength 4, Constitution 4, Dexterity 2, Wisdom 1. Not bad kid, you can be a shieldsman or a supporter, go on to the instructor with the shield badge" he basically shooed the kid away and beckoned the next one in line "next" after a look at the attribute he said "swordsman" sent the kid away and continued the selection.

According to the guild manual, there are 5 categories to classify attributes, those with higher constitution would tank, taking the damage for the party, those with higher dexterity, are damage dealers, either bowmen or swordsmen depending on the secondary attributes wisdom or strength respectively, those with higher wisdom can be mages, and those with raw strength will be either a supporter (strength and constitution) who carry the luggage or front line sweepers (strength and dexterity), finally specialist, those who have 3 high attributes and they can be leaders and tacticians added to a role, and then all-rounders with equal stats all over.

Soon enough came the time to check young Yunan and the bored look on his face finally cleared, replaced with a look of anticipation and expectations, his stats caught instructor Mark off guard, as he was planning on giving Yunan a bit of a hard time for not listening to his lecture, he stared at the screen for 10 long seconds then ushered Yunan speechlessly to the last instructor mumbling to himself the words "perfect all-rounder".

What the screen showed was "Strength 5, Constitution 5, Dexterity 5, Wisdom 5". One can understand what instructor Mark went through if one knew that perfect all rounders were rare enough, they pop up once in a million or even rarer, those royalty and nobles can train their kids to be all-rounders, but, there will always be an attribute short thanks to their tendencies and natural endowment.

Quite understandable really, since perfection is extremely rare in nature, one must lean towards something or the other, those with high strength are hot-headed and rarely have high wisdom, equally their muscles are stronger making them lose some flexibility. The smarter ones have higher wisdom but would lack either strength or vitality, therefore, perfect all rounders do cause a bit of shock when they appear, they can be whatever they want, they can even do everything just as well as the other roles.

Yunan made his way silently to the specialist instructor, he was the only specialist in his class of 50 newly enrolled students, he stood behind his teacher wordlessly. After the classification finished, each instructor took away his charges into either a field, a class or a library, depending or their roles, while Yunan and his instructor stood there staring at each other.

Finally, the instructor sighed and said: "what do you want to learn?". Yunan simply answered "everything". The instructor looked at him as if this kid was taking something precious from him, heaved another heavy sigh with a reluctant look on his face. "Fine, call me Bai. Each day you will have one class in the morning and one in the afternoon, you can take each class only once per week and you can choose what to do in your free time, choose your classes as you like. Come find me tomorrow at the teachers' lounge" with that he left without waiting for Yunan to answer, he did not even ask for his name.

'I got the lazy one, perfect!' thought Yunan as he watched Bai leave, he started thinking about how he would arrange his classes for the week, after all, that would be his next 5 years worth of studies and he did not want it to be boring in any way.